Saint Augustine (sānt ô`gəstēn), city (1990 pop. 11,692), seat of St. Johns co., NE Fla.; inc. 1824. Located on a peninsula between the Matanzas and San Sebastian rivers, it is separated from the Atlantic Ocean by Anastasia Island; the Intracoastal Waterway Intracoastal Waterway, c.3,000 mi (4,827 km) long, partly natural, partly artificial, providing sheltered passage for commercial and leisure boats along the U.S. Atlantic coast from Boston, Mass. to Key West, S Fla.
..... Click the link for more information. passes through the city. St. Augustine is a port of entry, a shrimping and commercial fishing center, and a popular year-round resort. The economic mainstay is tourism, supplemented with revenues from small industries. The oldest city in the United States, it was founded in 1565 by the Spanish explorer Pedro Menéndez de Avilés on the site of an ancient Native American village and near the place where Ponce de Léon, the discoverer of Florida, had landed in 1513. The town was burned and sacked by the English buccaneers Sir Francis Drake (1586) and Capt. John Davis (1665). St. Augustine repelled attacks by South Carolinians in 1702–3 and in 1740 by James Oglethorpe Oglethorpe, James Edward (ō`gəlthôrp)
..... Click the link for more information. , the founder of Georgia, but it passed to the English in 1763 at the end of the French and Indian Wars French and Indian Wars, 1689–1763, the name given by American historians to the North American colonial wars between Great Britain and France in the late 17th and the 18th cent.
..... Click the link for more information. . In the American Revolution, Tories flocked to the city from the North but left when it reverted to Spain in 1783. In 1821, Spain ceded Florida to the United States, and St. Augustine grew rapidly until the Seminole War in the 1830s. Union troops occupied the city in Mar., 1862, and held it throughout the Civil War. Among the old landmarks is

Castillo de San Marcos (kăstē`yō də săn mär`kəs), now a national monument (see National Parks and Monuments National Parks and Monuments

National Parks
Name Type¹ Location Year authorized Size

acres (hectares)

Description
Acadia NP SE Maine 1919 48,419 (19,603) Mountain and coast scenery.
..... Click the link for more information. , table). The oldest masonry fort in the country (built 1672–96), it was Spain's northernmost outpost on the Atlantic in the Americas.

Fort Matanzas (mətăn`zəs), also a national monument, was built by Spain in 1742. Other places of interest in the city are the old schoolhouse, the house reputed to be the oldest in the United States (said to date from the late 16th cent.), and the cathedral (built 1793–97; partly restored). Flagler College is in the city.

Bibliography

See G. E. Baker, The Oldest City (1983); J. P. M. Waterbury, Augustine History (1989).

Saint Augustine

City (pop., 2000: 11,592), northeastern Florida, U.S. It is the oldest continuously settled U.S. city. In 1513 Juan Ponce de León landed there in search of the Fountain of Youth and claimed the territory for Spain. It became part of the U.S. in 1821. The Castillo de San Marcos, now a national monument, is a symbol of the era of Spanish control. During the American Revolution the city was a refuge for loyalists, and during the Indian Wars it was the place of imprisonment for Osceola and other Seminoles. It is a winter and summer resort and a port on the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway. The economy is based on tourism and fishing.

Saint Augustine

a resort in NE Florida, on the Intracoastal Waterway: the oldest town in North America (1565); the northernmost outpost of the Spanish colonial empire for over 200 years. Pop.: 11 915 (2003 est.)